Me, my dad, and my brother have signed up to ride in the “Best Dam Bike Race” for MS in late June, and I have only just barely begun my training, and I can tell that it is going to be a VERY long month, indeed. I went out on a “short” bike ride with my dad on Wednesday. It was truly epic. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be an asthmatic, just go ride a bike. That’s about what I felt like at the end. I guess all that musician-ness and wind-using did not help my lung capacity and cardio-vascular skills in the least. But my biggest problem with riding bikes has to be the seat. The following day, Thursday, my legs were not sore. They were feeling pretty good. But sitting… That was the difficult part. That bike seat… Oh boy. A lesson in pain. And going out again today… You know how it feels when you have a child with a bony rear end sitting on your lap and moving around? It was kind of like that, except it’s your own bony rear end… to End. If you get my drift. But apparently that’ll go away. Eventually. I pray to the almighty Gods of distance bike-racing that it’s soon…

My biggest complaint, though, is that my father, the tech guy who plays in a band, is much more comfortable than I am. Albeit, he has been doing it much longer than I have, but he also has slight asthma, I do not. He is middle-aged; I am entering my prime years. He sits at a desk all day for work; I run around waiting tables. But after our little three-mile ride today, we got back to the house, and he decides to go around the route again! And me, I’m kind of dying, so I park it and watch him ride off into the distance in his… Fitness.

I feel OLD.

Speaking of feeling old, I realized the other day that I pre-date the iPod. Wow.

P.S. If anyone reading this would like to donate to my cause, please e-mail me at amanda@amandamerrill.com and I will send you a link to donate! PLEASE DONATE TO THIS GREAT CAUSE!

So, I got my job back at Dragon Hill. Of course, none of you really know what that entails.

Dragon Hill is a very popular, very small Chinese place in my neighborhood. Their food is very, very good. I began working there my Senior year in high school. I had to quit when I went down to school, but now that I’m back for the summer, since they missed me so much, they gave me my job back for the summer. I can’t complain.

Oh wait, of course I can! That’s what us people in the food biz do!

My main concern about working there is that everyone working there is Chinese. At least, while I’m working. Their accents are as thick as lead. It is very, very difficult to keep a conversation going with them. For instance, talking movies. It took me a full minute to figure out that my co-working was trying to say “Transformers.” We kind of gave up trying to talk about movies after I took a full minute of “what”-ing to figure out that one. And then he attempted to ask what my career was going to be, but, as the word “career” is chock full of r’s, it took me a few tries, again, to figure out that he was saying “career.”

Yes. I am doing it. I am writing a blog for my mother as her mothers’ day gift. I am cheap and was much too busy yesterday to go out and buy something. But really… She said not to get her anything. Of course, by youngest sibling gave her a giant novelty card, that I’m sure brought her… “great joy and happiness.” It was full of all the classic mumbo-jumbo about charity, longsuffering, patience, etc. etc. etc., but who REALLY wants to read that in a silly giant card bought simply to gratify the giver’s conscience so that they could at least say that they got her something?

Not I! I am writing something from the heart! From the deepest corners of my most child-ward portions of my soul! From the most shrunken parts of my college-starved stomach! From the inner cravasses of my extremely clean hands! From every arch, every callous, every inch of my feet! From the tips of every little temperature-sensing nerve in my body! From every fuzzy sock stolen from her sock drawer to every fuzzy glove pilfered from her collection! From every disgusting box of pasta-roni, kraft macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter-sandwich! From every moment of leg-numbness sitting in class filling my brain with things that will make me a giant nerd! From the hundreds of elementary school, middle school, high school, and college essays with massive amounts of beautiful chicken-scratch! From every phone call, messy manicure, hair-crimping, What-Not-To-Wear-ing, whistle-fest, and I-love-you-more-ing!

Happy Mothers’ Day, Mom! (No joke!)

(actual picture of what we gave her for breakfast. Not really. I found this on deviantart. But it’s fitting!)

And if that wasn’t gross enough, you should have seen what was left in my fridge at the end of school year while I was moving out.

A problem with people who try to use an accent that they are not proficient at.

I have an even bigger problem when people are in a play about a dialect and fail to use the dialect that defines their character.

I have an even more monstrous problem when I am charged eleven dollars to watch these people try and fail at using a very distinct dialect. Especially when it is such a well-known and well-loved show such as “My Fair Lady.” In the event that you have never seen this blessed show, and are unfamiliar with the plot, here is this from the lovely Wikipedia…

“Henry Higgins, an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics, boasts to fellow linguist Colonel Pickering that he can train any woman to speak so properly that he could pass her off as a duchess. Pickering is intrigued by Higgins’s boast and wagers that Higgins cannot make good on his claim. Higgins takes on the challenge. He chooses as his subject Eliza Doolittle, a poor girl with a strong Cockney accent whom he encounters selling flowers in Covent Garden. An intensive makeover of Eliza’s speech, manners, and dress begins in preparation for her appearance at the Embassy Ball.”

Anyway, do not ever see this show unless you know the actors are getting paid, because that means that they also know how to use an accent and not slip in and out of it. If they didn’t, they would be fired. They can’t do that to volunteers. It would hurt their feelings.

But this isn’t really a real post. In fact, it has absolutely no reason to be here other than the fact that someone expects there to be on here in the morning, accompanied by a rather humorous picture. Well, TOO BAD. My feet are cold, so I’m going to sleep.

BUT.

My blog has now reached the QUADRUPLE DIGITS in relation to views! Hooray! Thanks for reading, y’all! Ha ha, how insignificant…

I’ll write something tomorrow or Friday. I will have worked a night at Dragon Hill, so that may provide me with ample writing material.